‘Double Pink’ is the debut album by And Is Phi (Andrea Isabelle Phillips), a multidisciplinary artist from Norway and the Philippines now based in South East London. ‘Double Pink’ is a nuanced world that draws on colours and texture; with influences of Joni Mitchell and Frank Zappa, 90's R&B and Madlib’s ‘Shades Of Blue’ blending languidly to produce a base for uncovering layers of self, a deep release, and fragile new form.

Written by Andrea and co-produced with Fiona Roberts and Lorenz Okello over a nine month period; ‘Double Pink’ thematically explores the many movements of internal change, speaking from a deep inner voice inside the body. The title track is an invitation to be as unapologetically hungry as you please after a long absence of life giving passion and trust in oneself. ‘White Noise’ is a recovery song playing in your soul the first time you made it back out to the dance floor after a heart break so massive it laid rest to the person you used to be. Songs like ‘Working’ and ‘Staaar’ come from a candid and contemplative aspect. Stages of grief and resilience and wonder and wisdom are all touched upon.

“The album explores metamorphosis, liminal spaces, and the multiple faces of love”, says Andrea. “I mention love as a key ingredient, because anyone who has had to push and pull and hold and yield themselves through great loss and transformation knows it ain’t gonna happen without love. Tough times ask for double love, a stronger heart, something like a double pink”.

Andrea’s story dots between periods spent living in Norway, the Philippines and England - experiencing joy and beauty battling corruption and violence in Manila, DJing in Oslo, losing her sizable record collection in a warehouse fire before making friends and family in the jazz scene in London. Every story needs a scene, a landscape, an environment; all things Andrea visualises when writing songs.

“At my heart I am emotional and imaginative, searching for freedom for my spirit. What grounds it all is coming from a family of storytellers. My father played drums and percussion, he was a great dancer and a true collector and connoisseur of music from everywhere. My wise mother instilled in me a sense of faith and grace”.

Andrea is far from new to the scene, having performed with Steamdown, Emma Jean Thackray, Hector Plimmer, Scrimshire, William Florelle and many more as a valuable and inspiring creative force within the South London music scene. Andrea also created the album’s artwork and music videos: musicality and painting evolved from her initial creative languages of drawing and dance. All aspects are dialects of her common language: singing what can’t be painted and painting what can’t be sung.


DJ Support:

Jammz Supernova (BBC Radio 6 Music) and Tony Minvielle (Jazz FM) More

On the new album, Days Like Now, Bennett takes direct inspiration from the music of Wales.

The songs draw heavily on acoustic folk sounds and melodies. During the pandemic Huw sat and wrote a lot of material just with his bass and acoustic guitars and that low key atmosphere is very present throughout the new record.

Drums are lo-fi and fuzzy, and the palette of sounds draws from many folk cultures around the world, but this time round has a distinctly Welsh influence.


Early DJ Support:
Huey Morgan, Cerys Matthews, and Jamie Cullum on BBC Radio 2, Adam Walton on BBC Radio Wales. Mafalda and Breakfast Zakia on NTS Radio. More

New London based quartet Qwalia, led by drummer Yusuf Ahmed, offer a plethora of influences whilst remaining resolutely itself. Assembled from musicians who play with David Byrne, Joy Crookes, Nubiyan Twist, Frank Ocean, Jordan Rakei, Sampha, Cat Stevens and more; Yusuf is joined by Tal Janes on guitars and vocals, Ben Reed on bass and keyboardist Joseph Costi. Qwalia’s debut album ‘Sound And Reason’ is set for release by Alberts Favourites on 24th March 2023.

The name Qwalia stems from the same sounding word Qualia, a philosophy of mind with the property of being an ineffable experience. Qwalia’s music is an instinctive aural expression of how things seemed in the moment of creation.

In April ‘21, Qwalia spent two days recording completely improvised music at the Fish Factory in North West London. There was no plan or preconceived idea of what the music should sound like or what was going to happen.

“We set up altogether in one room, dimmed the lights, pressed record and just played,” says Yusuf. “We came away with over 13 hours of music, which was consolidated into three albums worth of material. The final record is mainly a result of pulling faders up or down to create space and structure out of what was already there from the live recording. The production process felt akin to a sculptor chipping away excess stone to reveal a statue that was already there, and occasionally putting some makeup on it!”

The band members are Pakistani, Italian, Venezuelan, Jewish and English. A reflection of the fact that cultural categories are infinite; Qwalia’s music unconsciously explores identity, exposing what this can mean. Or perhaps that it doesn’t mean anything at all.


Early support from Mary Anne Hobbs and Gilles Peterson, support to come from Huey Morgan, Cerys Matthews. More

A1 Away Mission
A2 Summation
A3 Line Of Best Fit
A4 Land of Wood and Water
A5 Pie’s Eyes feat. Hector Plimmer
A6 Satellite
A7 Uroboros
B1 Searching
B2 Tangential City
B3 Grounded
B4 Regeneration
B5 Axiom
B6 The Infinite Boundary

Encompassing elements of experimental techno, ambient, dub and jazz; sonic scientist Pie Eye Collective - the solo project of Bristol-born, London-based Matthew Gordon - returns with second album ‘Tangential City’, an instrumental exposition of how people experience different lives in the same city.

Pie Eye Collective’s voice remains clear in this new record, while hinting at exciting new developments in an ongoing exploration of rhythm and frequency. With a quasi-scientific, research based approach to music making, Pie Eye Collective creates an organic collage of evocative sounds, which could be filed alongside records by Theo Parrish, Lorraine James or Space Afrika. Personally influenced by mathematics, graphs, geometry, and calculus; his genre-melding music draws equally from jazz and soul music, both ancient, contemporary, and futuristic. Time signatures, sometimes hard to pin down, only lead to a more hypnotic sense of being afloat in a sea of harmonics and strangely familiar musical memories. Melodic and full of spatial movement, momentary pulses, and interjection; it is music that wants you to free yourself completely and wash over you.

One person has a different experience of living in a city to that of another. Barred by accessibility, wealth, race, gender, nationality; parts of the city are opened or closed to the individual with or without their knowledge. Impressions can either diverge and deviate so much that they could be describing entirely separate places, or be so similar they could be living the same life. Multiply this by the several million people that live next to each other and a wildly fractured vision appears. A multiverse of possible experiences. Can the paths of these separate existences be unlocked and traversed? 'Tangential City' is the point of intersection.

‘Pie’s Eyes’ is the fourth and most recent addition to the growing Pie Eye Collective + Hector Plimmer songbook (the first and second appeared on Hector’s second album ‘Next To Nothing’, the third arrived on PEC’s debut ‘Salvation’). “Our creative process is very natural, spontaneous and fluid”, says Gordon. “When we write together we bounce around the studio playing with synthesizers, drum machines and bits of percussion. This track is like the playful, unbounded, collaborative dance we do.” More

So many of us head back out into the world post-lockdown, with a different perspective on the overpowering nature of it. Nothing Feels Like Everything, looks deeply at how the absence of something can be just as overwhelming, whether the absence of physical contact, the absence of love, the absence of empathy and respect.

This album places gentleness beside power and cacophony to recreate the vast swings of emotion experienced in isolation. When nothing can be too much, while at the same time, all we want.

The sixth studio album from Scrimshire is an atmospheric and emotional experience. Moments of swirling orchestral energy perfectly countered by quiet, meditative calm. Moving string arrangements sit alongside delicate synthesiser-soaked rhythms. After huge collaborations with Emma-Jean Thackray, Omar, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Ego Ella May and many more on previous records, with only four vocal contributions this time, it is his most instrumental exploration to date.

But those few vocal contributions are captivating. From the opening explosion of UK jazz and soul legend Cleveland Watkiss, with a powerfully clear call on behalf of the marginalised and oppressed in society to the deeply intimate and supportive incantations of Ursula Rucker. No word is wasted here.

The record carries on a tradition of collaboration, with contributions from Jessica Lauren, Idris Rahman (Soothsayers, Wildflower, Ill Considered), Nat Birchall, Huw Marc Bennett, Miryam Solomon, Emanative and recent Albert's Favourites signing Pie Eye Collective. In fact, the phone calls that led to these songs are in many ways the power of it. Reaching out across long distances, through conversations to find meaning in difficult times, and then capture those feelings in music. The process being a therapeutic experience that is now present in the sounds.

"Throughout lockdown I've been writing so much, and when I released Believers Vol. 1 back in November, I'd wanted to bring people something that captured the warmth and hopefulness I think we needed despite deep political and cultural turmoil. But there were obviously very low moments, socially and personally and I was still capturing those too. This album holds more of those moments of loss and being lost, of solitary contemplation and meditation, of yearning, of anxiety.

More than I've experienced before, the collaborations came through long and beautiful phone conversations, developing friendships with new people, rekindling and supporting older relationships, taking time and giving each other time, care and space to create. It's what makes this album special to me." More

A1 – Gratitude
A2 – Salvation
A3 – Assimilation
A4 - Flibbers feat. Hector Plimmer
A5 – Djed
B1 – Beta
B2 - In Habit
B3 - Hymn feat. Mettashiba
B4 – Saqqara
B5 – Yantra

Pie Eye Collective has been a part of the Albert’s Favourites family for a little while, working with Hector Plimmer and Scrimshire on studio and live performances, he has also played alongside Emma-Jean Thackray and And Is Phi.

Pie Eye Collective is the solo project of sound scientist and explorer Matthew Gordon.

While at its heart electronica, Gordon creates an organic collage of influences and evocative noises, even drawing from jazz and soul music. Time signatures and rhythms, sometimes hard to pin down, only lead to a more hypnotic sense of being afloat in a sea of harmonics and strangely familiar musical memories.

It is music that wants you to completely free yourself and let it move through you.

Press:

Stamp The Wax Premiere - 'Gratitude'

"A soulful electronic soundscape of falling jazz chord progressions and broken interchanging time signatures." Stamp the Wax More

A1 - Wall Street feat. Andrew Ashong (Matthew Herbert’s Street Dub
A2 - Joyfulness (Elkka Remix)
B1 - Step (Daz I Kue Remix)
B2 - Somebody Else feat. Andrew Ashong (Shy One Remix)

Breaking up South London soul man, Ashong’s vocals into a ghostly exchange with a mind-bending bass line and double-time rhythm, the 'Street Dub' is unmistakable Matthew Herbert quirkiness.

DJ, producer, songwriter & Femme Culture label founder, Elkka, brings her unmistakeable energy & power to Joyfulness. What was once a soothing, mellow-soul excursion is now a direct & inspiring dance-floor cut. Thumping kick drums, swirling hi-hat rhythms, jittery synth and robotic-steel-drum melodies reform Hector and Alexa's sublime production.

On the B-side, Broken Beat legend Daz I Kue delivers a squelchy sub-heavy workout, full of percussive punchiness and new orchestral dimensions.

Meanwhile south-London producer and DJ Shy One takes another Andrew Ashong collaboration, formerly playlisted on BBC Radio 6 Music, and goes deep, phasey and peculiar. Chopping outcuts of chat between Andrew and Hector, ethereal vocals and synths and delivering a heavy kick drum, with a touch of broken beat magic More